Abstract
A caregiver’s style of parenting is crucial for the formation of the non-cognitive development of children at preschool age. Less is known, however, about the association between parenting style and the non-cognitive development of preschool-aged children in rural China. The current study aims to address this gap and to explore how the adoption of different styles of parenting influences the non-cognitive development of young children. The sample includes 1159 children aged 49–65 months and their primary caregivers from rural areas of 11 counties in Shaanxi Province. The participants in the survey were those individuals that participated in both of the study’s surveys—in 2015 (when the sample children were 22–30 months old) and in 2017 (when the sample children were 49–65 months old). The main data in this study are from the survey conducted in 2017. Primary caregivers reported on their parenting styles as well as the non-cognitive development of their children. Linear regressions and multivariable regressions were used to analyze the data. According the findings of the survey, a large share of the sample children are shown to be suffering developmental delays in the non-cognitive skills both at age of 22–30 months (60.14%) and at age of 49–65 months old (51.77%). The results also demonstrate that when the primary caregiver tended to use an authoritative parenting style, the child had higher level of the non-cognitive development. In contrast, the authoritarian parenting style was negatively associated with the non-cognitive development of children. The findings of the study indicate that the scores of the authoritarian parenting style were much higher than the scores of the authoritative parenting style, which can partly explain the high prevalence of non-cognitive delays among the sample children. In addition, we also find a number of demographic characteristics of children and households were associated with the adoption of the different parenting styles by the primary caregivers. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of the scientific style of parenting in the development of the non-cognitive skills of young children. Policies in rural China that focus on the improvement of child non-cognitive development should encourage primary caregivers to use styles related to an authoritative parenting rather than an authoritarian parenting style.